RBA leaves rates on hold at two per cent

The Reserve Bank of Australia has left interest rates on hold at two per cent at its monthly board meeting.

A pedestrian walks past the Reserve Bank of Australia head office in Sydney. Tuesday, Sept 2, 2014. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas) NO ARCHIVING

The Reserve Bank building in Sydney. (AAP) Source: AAP

Anyone hoping for an interest rate cut in the coming months would be disappointed by Tuesday's announcement from the RBA.

There are a couple of important messages standing out in the statement heralding the central bank's decision to keep the cash rate at 2.0 per cent, and they offer no reason to expect it will go lower.

One is the change in emphasis on the Australian dollar.

In its statement a month earlier, the RBA was conspicuously keen for the Australian dollar to fall further, pointing out that although it had fallen against the US dollar, the greenback had itself been rising, so the Aussie dollar's falls were less pronounced against other currencies.

That meant one part of the so-called transmission mechanism linking interest rates to the economy - the tendency of lower interest rates to bring the exchange rate down to a more competitive level - was not working as it should.
"Further depreciation seems both likely and necessary, particularly given the significant declines in key commodity prices," the RBA said last month.

By the time the RBA's board convened for this month's monetary policy meeting, the exchange rate had stepped down further, by about four per cent on average.

And the RBA's commentary became much more relaxed. "The Australian dollar is adjusting to the significant declines in key commodity prices," the central bank said in Tuesday's statement from its governor, Glenn Stevens.

The other point worth noting is the RBA's oblique reference to the economy's potential growth rate, something Mr Stevens brough up for discussion in a speech in Sydney two weeks ago.

"While the rate of growth has been somewhat below longer-term averages, it has been associated with somewhat stronger growth of employment and a steady rate of unemployment over the past year," he said in Tuesday's announcement.

In other words, the economy appears to be able to generate adequate employment growth at a slower pace of economic growth than in the past.

If that is the result of some temporary factor - a statistical glitch, perhaps, or simply economic growth and employment getting out of sync, as they do from time to time - then the ultimate impact on the RBA's policy stance will be minimal.

But there is clearly a current of thought at the RBA that this may be a permanent, or at least persistent, reduction in the economic growth rate needed to reduce unemployment.

Putting these two aspects of the statement together, the thinking at the RBA seems to be that the exchange rate may not have to fall much further, and the economy may not have to grow much faster, to ensure unemployment starts drifting down.

That in turn suggests the chance of another interest rate in the coming few months is slim at best. And that's even before factoring in the risk over-overstimulating the Sydney and Melbourne housing markets.

 

While most indicators sensitive to interest rates are improving, business investment is still lagging TD Securities chief Asia-Pacific macro strategist Annette Beacher said.

"The RBA has said plenty of times that borrowing costs are not the problem, it's an animal spirits problem," Ms Beacher said.

RBA governor Glenn Stevens has previously highlighted a lack of `animal spirits', or a willingness to take risks and invest, in the economy.


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Source: AAP


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